3.5 Barbarians have a lot of HP and apparently " damage reduction" (I played way back when it was just Advanced Dungeons and Dragons).
That and he’s got plot armor.
Burlew’s characterization is damn good. I’m actually finding myself more annoyed at Roy for badgering poor Thog than I am at Thog for all the things he did…
“Thog and talky-man address many points raised by readers.”
If Burlew did a mouseover text, that would be an AWESOME one for this strip. 
Heh, nice jab through the 4th wall there.
ETA: damned, ninja’d but twice. :shakefist:
Pretty much, yeah. A barbarian gets 1-12 hit points every level, plus a bonus for a high constitution (and most barbarians have a pretty good constitution.) A long sword like Roy’s does 1-8 points of damage, plus a bonus for a high strength, but that doesn’t increase per level, the way hit points do. A 10th level barbarian with a longsword will have rolled ten twelve-sided dice to get his hit points, but will still only be rolling a single eight sided die for damage. So once a warrior-type character gets higher than second or third level, it’s pretty much impossible to kill him with a single hit from a normal, human-sized weapon.
Also, as a fighter, Roy doesn’t do any extra damage for a sneak attack. At best, he has a slightly better chance to hit, because Thog is flat footed. Haley, being a rogue, has the sneak attack special class ability, which is why she does so much more damage against enemies when they aren’t aware of her.
Fighters don’t do sneak attack. They only have regular attacks, which they can do on the sneak. But when they do, they don’t get the eleventy D6 of bonus damage Rogues roll when they get to yell “SNEAK ATTACK, BITCH”
Thus, just because he whacked Thog out of the blue doesn’t mean he hurt Thog any more than he would have by straight whacking at him after yelling “En guarde, evildoer !” and similar. And Thog is as tough as he’s dumb.
That’s a literal statement, BTW - as a Barbarian he most probably took points away from Intelligence to dump into Constitution and/or Strength :p.
ETA: is it Ninja Day or something ?!
Nitpick: that’s a Greatsword. 1d10 of damage, plus 1.5 times the STR bonus on account of being used two handed.
Still a drop in the sea of Barb HPs of course.
First off, once you get past about level 5, everybody’s superhuman, even the guys who aren’t flying around casting Disintegrate.
Second, Thog’s a Barbarian. Among other things, this means that in a field of superhumanly tough fighters, he’s one of the toughest. It also means he’s superhumanly skilled at not getting sneak attacked where it hurts. There are ways that someone of his level could be even better at one or the other, but he’s close to the best.
Probably took points away from Intelligence? I think we can consider that a certainty in this case.
If you’re going to nitpick, best be sure you’re getting your nitpicks straight. 1d10 is a bastard sword; a greatsword is 2d6.
Roy is also known to have Power Attack, and given the circumstances (unarmored opponent, caught unawares), he’s likely to have used it for a significant bonus. Even at absolute maximum, though, if he Power Attacked for full (which he is not likely to have done), he’d do something like 2d6 + 26 (from power attack, assuming 13th level) + 6 (assuming 18 Str without his belt) + 2 (from weapon specialization), or an absolute maximum of 46 damage (probably less). More realistically, we’re probably looking at more like 8 points of power attack (giving him an 80% chance of hitting) and an average roll, giving something like 31 damage. Thog, meanwhile, probably has somewhere in the neighborhood of 130-150 HP (more if he rages), and shrugs off completely the first 2 or maybe 3 points of damage from each attack.
I’m not versed in the arcana of versions 3.5 or 4 as you all are, but the fact that Roy’s going upside Thog’s head didn’t even leave one of the little red lines that Burlew uses to indicate damage…well, that doesn’t bode well for Roy. Neither does Thog being able to dodge most of Roy’s swings after getting hit in the head.
(Of course, Roy’s probably got a sea of HP too, albeit not one as broad and deep as Thog’s; I thought the major advantage of Fighter vs. Barb was that Fighters got to wear the v. high end plate armor and could specialize much higher in a broader variety of weapons—not sure if those advantages help Roy much in this fight.)
House ruling, I would have at least given Roy double damage for a hit that went down as drawn. Edit: Though Chronos’s explanation is a much better way of going about it. I think my first point still holds: 30 HP to the grill and no marks on Thog?!
Maybe he failed to confirm the crit.
Also, who’s Thog been talking to for crying out loud? “Update on relationship status?” Thog shouldn’t manage more than one word with two syllables in a sentence. A four syllable word should melt his brains - and unlike hp, Thog’s got very little reserves for ability damage.
Oh, two other things I noticed about the comic itself: First, Elan managed to say an awful lot without actually letting slip anything he shouldn’t have. Tarquin already knows that Elan has met Nale; it’s no great revelation that he’s also met one of Nale’s accomplices. In fact, it’s better that Tarquin knows this: Now, if Elan has to intervene in the fight in some way (which could be very subtle, but knowing Elan, probably won’t be), it’ll look like an effort to defeat one of his villains, not an effort to save his friend.
Second, in the fight itself, it’s Roy who’s getting enraged, while Thog is still perfectly calm. That’s almost certainly a mistake on Roy’s part, since anger will likely lead him to make mistakes (it already has, if Tarquin can hear what he’s saying), but if he manages to make Thog angry, it’ll just make him an even tougher foe.
On re-reading, note that Roy’s attack makes a “CLONK” sound rather than the usual “slash”. And it knocked Thog on his arse. Roy possibly hit him with the flat of his blade as a non-lethal attack, or could have used some fancy tripping/disabling Feat I guess (not too well versed in gimmicky Fighter feats myself. Rogues 4 Life, yo).
Yeah, what does the multitude think about that? I saw someone at the OOTS discussion board make the comment that they wondered if the sword were wood painted to look like metal, but Roy’s obviously experienced/smart enough to pick up on that. Could just be Thog’s insane DR (maybe he’s related to the MITD? /snark), but certainly slashes with edged weapons don’t sound like that in the OOTS universe. Speaking of DR, I love the following quote in a post from those boards:
That leaves an intentional attempt to disable, and while Roy’s certainly LG enough to try it, I’m not sure why he’d be trying to with Thog. Thog’s bad-ass enough to really harm or kill Roy if Roy’s pulling his punches, I can’t imagine Thog having any knowledge about Nale, and I can’t see Tarquin letting Roy walk hand in hand out of the arena with Thog.
Just glad to see that the Giant has picked up his posting frequency.
Heh heh … no doubt – after all, this is the readership that kept arguing that Belkar wasn’t really evil, until Rich finally basically blew his top and said “HE’S CHAOTIC EVIL, DAMMIT! WHAT DO I HAVE TO SHOW HIM DOING?!” in the forums.
Good times, good times…
Right, what Belkar and Thog really show is that evil can be likable.
The difference is that Belkar is clever enough to know what he’s doing.